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Is An HR Consultant’s Legal Advice Covered By Legal Privilege?

Askews Website Employment Advice From Soliciotrs

Although HR advisors provide an invaluable service to SMEs, employers need to be aware that any legal advice they provide is not covered by legal privilege.

Any communications protected by legal privilege do not have to be disclosed in court. For employers facing a situation that may result in Employment Tribunal proceedings, legal privilege provides vital protection.

There are two types of legal privilege, namely, legal advice privilege (LAP) and litigation privilege (LP).

  • LAP is applied to confidential communications between a solicitor and their client in connection with the giving and/or receiving of legal advice. Litigation does not have to be contemplated or pending for LAP to apply.
  • For LP to apply, litigation must be contemplated or pending. Unlike LAP which can only apply to communications between a client and solicitor, litigation privilege can apply to communications between a client or the client’s lawyer and a third party.  LP will only apply to communications that have been made for the sole or dominant purpose of adversarial litigation.

The purpose of legal privilege is to allow members of the legal profession to exercise their skills and provide advice without fear of potentially compromising their client’s best interests.

Why does this matter?

In situations where an employee has a grievance or is subject to a disciplinary investigation, you, as an employer, are likely to seek legal advice well before Tribunal proceedings are contemplated. Your questions and the advice given can contain sensitive information which may, if disclosed by the employee’s solicitor, prejudice your side of the case should the matter end up in the Employment Tribunal. If you receive such advice from an HR consultant, although the advice may be excellent, it will not be covered by legal privilege, and nor will any other communications between you both.

To protect your best interests, in situations where a matter has even the slightest potential to end up in court, contact an employment law solicitor for advice. You can then be confident that you can speak freely and the communications between you and your solicitor will be privileged.

It is a common misconception that employment law advice is  expensive and not practical enough to support day-to-day HR issues. At Askews Legal LLP, not only do we provide a transparent fee structure, but we also offer two extremely helpful HR services, namely Ask HR and HR Genie.

 How Ask HR and HR Genie can help SMEs with their HR requirements.

Ask HR

Designed to support SMEs with their day-to-day HR and employment law needs, for a monthly fee, Ask HR offers:

  • A set number of hours per month where you can receive advice from one of our employment solicitors on any day to day employment law queries, including support with redundancies, absence management, holiday,  grievances and disciplinaries
  • Bespoke contracts of employment for all your employees and workers
  • A tailored staff handbook to suit your organisation’s needs and internal processes.
  • Personal, friendly support from Legal 500 ranked employment solicitors.
  • Confidence that you are fully up-to-date and compliant with employment law.
  • Free use of HR Genie for the duration of your membership

Subscribing to Ask HR is akin to having an employment law solicitor sitting next to your HR team, or in place of a HR Manager.

HR Genie

Manually managing employee documents can lead to data breaches, misplaced files (if you are using paper) and inaccuracies, not to mention reduced productivity.

HR Genie eliminates risks and provides a one-stop solution for your SMEs employment record storage and management needs. It allows you to safely store and access your employee documents using an online portal, providing you with complete peace of mind. At the touch of a button, you will be able to access your employees’ employment contracts, holiday and absence records, remuneration details, work patterns, appraisals, training records, and approve expenses.

With HR Genie, you can:

  • Manage HR tasks securely in the cloud, with 24/7 mobile friendly access from any location, with seamless integration between desktop and mobile devices
  • Access all employee documents at the touch of a button.
  • Record and approve holidays appointments, sickness absence and more.
  • Undertake appraisals
  • Drastically cut HR administration time.
  • Operate an intuitive system with user-defined access for individual team members.
  • Receive alerts for key dates
  • Send company-wide texts.
  • Generate and export reports, including holiday accrual, sickness absence, payroll, and staff turnover.
  • Allocate time and expenses to clients, projects, and activities.

HR Genie provides a paperless solution that allows you to manage all your employee-related personnel documents.

We know how busy you are running and growing your business. That is why HR Genie will conflict check all requests for leave and remind you of key dates such as birthdays, end of probation periods, anniversary of the first two years’ employment, and imminent work permit or qualification expiries. You will also get a notification if any member of staff is currently earning below the National Minimum Wage which can easily happen when a younger team member has a birthday that tips them into a new age-related pay bracket or there is a rate increase.

To find out more about Ask HR and HR Genie, please call us on 02476 231000 or email enquiries@askewslegal.co

Please note that this article is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.